AH reporting for connaught t that zippy Higgins is new u20 boss..best luck

Strong U20 management team announced.

Conn Telegraph pushed hard for the unsuccessful candidate again. 2 from 2 this summer. Dont be surprised when they turn on them

I've just checked social media and The Connaught Telegraph have called the appointment controversial.

@WillieJoe can I put a motion forward to ban The CT as a credible news source going forward.

Their reporting on Mayo GAA this summer has been nothing short of disgraceful.

Imagine calling the appointment of one of our greatest ever players controversial. Shameful

You can indeed, JimmysEyebrow!

Good man Jimmy. Best of luck to all the management team . All young and energetic. Three still playing If I’m not mistaken. Don’t know anything about Mark. Keith and Kevin were two of our best ever.

Forgot to say. Maybe the CB are finally looking ahead and thinking of a succession plan.

Enjoyed this pod as usual and love John, Mike, Edwin, Rob and all the regular contributors for making it so. Just one minor criticism. Rob continually jumping across others while they're speaking makes it hard to follow their whole point. As I said it's only a minor criticism. Keep up the great work lads.

Regarding the comments about CT labelling this appointment as potentially controversial, I can see why they may say that.

The biggest bug bear that people had with Peadar Gardiner's appointment was the fact that he had little to no managerial experience behind him. Not even managing at club level. Coaching a team and managing a team are two seperate things. It appears as though the County Board have gone down the same route with appointing Keith Higgins - another manager with zero experience managing a team.

Both Keith and Peadar played for years at the top level, but being a good player does not guarantee that you will be a good manager.

I wish Keith the best of luck but personally, I would have preferred either of the two alternatives. David Brady has experience guiding Ratoath to a Meath Senior Championship (a title that has proven to be wide open over the past few seasons with 4 different winners in the last 4 years) and John Maughan has a list of jobs a mile long as a manager.

Is there an outfield player anywhere in Mayo that could be converted to a goalkeeper.....clearly a big ask for a player to do that but are there any candidates

@FreeTheEastBank: David Dolan was an outfielder that converted to goalkeeping to help out his underage side in recent years. Not sure if it's closer to describe Bryan O'Flaherty & Nathan Roddy as outfielders who converted to goalkeepers & then converted back. Probably a few more I'm not thinking of.

Is this in relation to the county panel?

Between Livingston, Dolan, R Byrne, A Byrne, Fallon, Lunt, Jennings & O'Malley I'm not sure anyone doing a conversion today would come close to matching their levels in the next 2-3 years. It's a pretty specialised position with specialised skills (where having a strength in one, say accuracy with dead balls, doesn't really make up for the shortfall in others - especially with the changes to the 4/3 rule, see Derry's experiments with it last year).

Fascinating stuff TSU re the goalkeepers. Would Vahey (not an outfielder afaik), be on your radar?

Also, not sure about what Derry did, but am I right in thinking that Beggan, who is exceptional, still had an influential outfield role after the rule change? Andy might have ideas in that direction.

@catcol: Derry tried playing an outfielder in goal (prior & post the 4/3 rule changes) giving up 9 goals in 3 games. With a couple of those (the Kerry game especially where they conceded 5 to lose in dramatic fashion) you'd imagine a more experienced keeper might have been able to avoid.

Vahey (a strong soccer keeper background rather than an outfield Gaelic one, though no idea where he might have played underage) looked phenomenal last year. Forced his way into the squad & if things had worked out a bit smoother with his work demands, he looked like he might have been putting real pressure on. Not playing for the club pretty much kills any hope this year (for me). Hard to make a real case for a keeper if you've never seen them playing club Championship under the new rules... though he's one I'll always be interested to keep an eye on. The talent is there, for sure. Not sure if we've heard any word if it's work demands still hampering him or if the battle between himself and Livingstone is just that tight (I'd assume the latter - two serious keepers), fingers crossed we get to see more of him (we've been unfortunate with clashes on Hennelly/Livingstone, Livingstone/Vahey & Byrne/Basquille - a lot of serious talent missing out on 1st team minutes where they'd have been 1st choice in a majority of other clubs years earlier. Unfortunate on the surface, though who knows how much the competition for places helped drive that talent on).

If you've a Beggan, a Morgan, a Carroll or a Roach they can still make a real impact going forward. They're worth pulling back another defender or midfielder to let them roam. Just the different jersey & reactions of a crowd to a keeper going forward change the dynamics a bit, causing that touch more havoc. Put Beggan up against the rest of the Monaghan panel and he'd probably be right up there with lads like McCarron for his penetrating kick passes.

I can't think of too many (or any) doing that here in Mayo. Our closest would be (former underage keepers, current outfielders) Bryan O'Flaherty and Nathan Roddy who'd offer serious threats with 2 point shooting from range. Both were deemed to be worth more playing as forwards rather than coming up from the goal (every +120m round trip a keeper has to make advancing drops the accuracy & consistency a bit, so at a certain point you just want your best kickers up there waiting to kick), but different dynamics at county so you couldn't rule anything out. In terms of then just converting someone else to force it, much easier said than done. Colm one of the big success stories of a converted outfield player, but coming from a soccer goalkeeping background and even goalkeeping in the family went a big way in smoothing that transition.

We've often used Colm's outfield strengths pretty well, either as a sweeper or a +1 around a break zone. Sad to lose that option if he's away travelling. That said, most the lads fighting for it will be offering their own strengths. Someone like Luke Jennings & the bombs he frequently pumps in past the opposition 45 and you can well imagine Andy having some fun with creating runs & space for those. Dolan has youth, Rory Byrne with experience, Livingstone a different kicking technique/trajectory, with various pros and cons for a host of other lads. A lot will come down to which elements the management hope to focus on (the lad you pick for the eye of a needle mid range passes a different keeper to the one you pick for driving it long to space) and suits their overall plans rather than an A is better than B kinda thing.

I think John Vahey is the best keeper in the County now followed by Jack Livingstone ,David Dolan and Luke Jennings, I think he is a Garda in Dublin, surely management and CB could help him get a transfer down west, Andy did say they were going to work on that.

I got to know a pro soccer keeper over the summer and see a few training sessions. It simply reinforced in my head how little I know about goalkeeping and how specialized is the training and techniques. I see soccer punditry recently had the ex England goalie on and you could hear the level of detail about the goalkeeping that you nerd to be a goalkeeper to know.
We've options, I've no notion who'd be nest and only a goalkeeper should be making that choice frankly after what I witnessed in summer.

Who is the best club keeper out there? I think we are a far cry from the likes of Hennelly and Clarke. We will struggle in this department I feel. Ryan, Morgan, Rafferty and Beggan all top keepers and we really have no one. They need to find someone quick or else Galway will have their 5th Connaught in a row